Doubt is both a common and shared experience for many of us in the Beloved community. Although doubt can be a disorientating and a confusing experience, Christ walked through a wall to sit with Thomas in his doubt and he would do the same for you. As Thomas Merton once said, “though I may seem to be lost… I will not fear, for You are ever with me.”
SERMON BEGINS AT 22:30.
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There is a magical thing that happens in homes all over the world. When you have a child, you want your child to crawl, and then you want your kid to walk. My first child, Audrey, pulled herself to the coffee table. When she got to the coffee table, she began to bounce on her knees, and then she began to coast along. From there she started letting go and just being wobbly. At that point we began to get excited about the fact that Audrey was about to walk. Eventually she took her hands off of the coffee table, and we watched physics in motion.
God has created children, specifically young children, with gargantuan heads and tiny little bodies. So when Audrey let go of the coffee table, her gigantic head fell forward and suddenly she had a decision to make. She could stick that foot out to catch herself or she could die. So she stuck her foot out, and then she had momentum. It was step, step, step, fall. Do you know what we did? We exploded in celebration. We picked her up, spun her around, and kissed her face. Then we sat her down and pleaded with her to walk toward us again. After that we began e-mailing, Facebooking, taking pictures, tweeting, and all sorts of other things to get the word out that Audrey was walking. We did that with our son, Reid, and we’ve done that with our daughter Norah.
What I have learned as I watched all of our friends have children is that there is always an epic celebration around the kid walking. This is news to be declared. “This kid is walking!”
For all the people I have watched go through that process, I’ve never seen anybody watch their kid go step, step, step, fall and then say out loud, “Man, this kid is an idiot. Are you serious? Just three steps? Man, I can get the dog to walk two or three steps. Honey, this must be from your side of the family, because my side of the family is full of walkers. This must be some sort of genetic, shallow gene pool on your side of things.”
No father does that. Every father rejoices in the steps of his child. The father celebrates the steps of his child. I think what we have here is a picture of God celebrating us walking. So we step, step, step, and fall, and heaven applauds. At what? At the obedience of taking those three steps. The Father in heaven is crying, “He’s walking!” “She’s doing it!” And maybe the Accuser’s saying, “No, he only took a couple of steps. That’s nothing.”
But the celebration is in the steps, even if there are still falls. Here’s what I know about all of my children: they start to walk farther and farther and farther, and they begin to skip, they begin to run, they begin to jump, they begin to climb, and they begin to tear the house up. It’s beautiful. I knew even when they were step, step, step, falling that that process was the beginning of what would result in climbing trees, dancing, and sprinting. Knowing in my mind what’s to come, the three steps and the stumble were a celebration.
Moralists see the fall and believe that the Father is ashamed and thinks they’re foolish. So, more often than not, they stop trying to walk because they can’t see the Father rejoicing in and celebrating his child.
Church of Jesus; let us please be men and women who understand the difference between moralism and the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let’s be careful to preach the dos and don’ts of Scripture in the shadow of the cross’s “Done!” Resolve to know nothing but Jesus Christ crucified. We are not looking to conform people to a pattern of religion but pleading with the Holy Spirit to transform people’s lives. Let us move forward according to that upward call, holding firmly to the explicit gospel.
What we see in the Father’s heart in the Bible is its immensity, its bottomless depths. God’s heart is as complex and unfathomable as he is. Shouldn’t we stand firm in the gospel we believe and proclaim so that we reflect the bigness of God’s heart for a fallen world? The cross of Christ and his resurrection are cataclysms of the unsearchable judgments and affections of God. It is this immense gospel that spurs Paul to pray:
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith-that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.” (Eph. 3:14-19).
The Scripture’s complementary perspectives of the gospel on the ground and the gospel in the air help us comprehend the breadth, length, height, and depth of God’s love. Neither perspective dilutes the other but rather shapes our vision of God’s saving purposes to the epic scope of biblical revelation. We are after a gospel that is resolutely centered on the atoning work of Christ and scaled to the glory of God. Let the explicit gospel drive us to worship with all “the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:19) and in awe of both God’s immense, universe-subsuming glory and his deep, personal love for sinners. May we never assume that people understand this gospel but, instead, let’s faithfully live out and faithfully proclaim the explicit gospel with all the energy and compassion our great God and King has graciously given.
This article is excerpted from his book, Explicit Gospel. Copyright Crossway Books. Reprinted by permission.
King David doubts God because his life is falling apart. He doesn’t think God cares. Asaph doubts God because his world is falling apart. He doesn’t think God is fair. But when life is slipping away, David and Asaph run to Almighty God to sort out their doubts and anger. We all have unique life-journeys, and God is always ready to meet us at the point of our doubts.
Something about me and sports are not compatible. The mere suggestion of a ball game can double my stress level. I can lose a game of tennis before I can manage to serve a ball over the net. At school I always tried to run as far away from the ball as possible; fielding in distant, obscure corners; and attempting to protect the goal areas, without ever having to come into contact with the offending object! As a child I was short-sighted for years without realizing it, and, by the time I had my first pair of glasses, years of ball-game humiliation had made a lasting impression on my memory.
So it was with some relief that I watched Joel kicking a ball in the garden, the day after he began to walk! Almost from birth he had a fascination with balls. Someone had made him a Victorian patchwork ball as a baby gift, and he would hold it and cuddle it for hours. Then, as he grew older, he would throw it, as babies do, laughing, onto the floor, over and over again.
Joel would yell with delight at the sight of an orange, apple, or grapefruit, because it looked like like a ball, too, and if you gave him one to hold, he would use it as a ball, or try to eat the skin.
Yesterday we went to a family sports’ morning. Once again I found myself studiously trying to avoid contact with anything moderately spherical. I tried badminton, but I wasn’t much good at that either, because I always expect the shuttlecock to bounce, and, for some strange reason, it never does!
Bernie and the children were happily batting balls over the nets in short tennis, and playing basket ball. Joel slept most of the time, but towards the end he woke and thought he was in wonderland because there were balls everywhere1 The balls were all of the spongy type, and nice and squishy for him to hold. He ran along the edge of the courts, squealing with delight and collecting any ball that came his way. An out-of-control toddler is a liability where people are playing sport, so I gathered him up in my arms, together with his ball collection, which we had to redistribute among several ball-less tennis games. Unable to pick up balls himself, he now yelled at the other children, and pointed to every ball he could see. He yelled and yelled until someone picked the ball up and gave it to him. But he was running out of places to put the balls. He had one in each pocket, one in each hand, and one cuddled to his chest. Five was the most he could handle; after that, he always had to drop at least one ball in order to grab another.
I put him down for a few minutes, and watched him trying to gather balls, but always losing some as he reached out for more. He was like a little, clumsy juggler, struggling there, with balls going all over the place.
“I think you’ve got yourself another story for your book!” My friend smiled at Joel. “Don’t you ever feel like that! When will we ever learn that we can only hold so many balls at once? After that, every time we pick up one new responsibility, we have to drop some of the others, till we end up like Joel, clumsily juggling, and not doing anything very well!” She said this with feeling. We both knew – we’d been there, trying to be a mother, a housewife, cook, pastor’s wife, church social organizer, children’s department organizer, writer, interior designer, seamstress… The list seemed endless. Some attractive “balls” had bounced our way, and we’d tried to catch them for a while, but always something else had suffered. This year we had both decided we needed fewer “balls”, but this was only January and already all kinds of balls were bouncing around our feet, just waiting to be picked up. It was hard to know which ones to choose.
It was time to pack up, and Joel was very helpful as he picked up the balls one at a time and dropped them slowly into their box.
Dear Father, there are so many busy “balls of responsibility” bouncing around in my life. Help me to concentrate on Your priorities for my life, so that I am not rushing around trying to gather them all. Help me to choose the most important “balls” of sitting at Your feet, and listening to Your words, so that You can help me to choose the best “balls” for my life. Amen.
What are the greatest priorities in your life?
List all the “balls” that you are trying to hold at the moment. Prayerfully consider your list, and see if there are any that need to be dropped for a while because they make it harder to hold the most important “balls”: your relationship with God, and your relationship with your family.
Spend some time today having a special moment with God, a special moment with your spouse, and a special moment with each of your children.
